


Our Darkest Moments

by SakeruTama



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: BAMF Bilbo Baggins, Battle of Five Armies - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bilbo is So Done, Dragon Bilbo Baggins, Dragons everywhere, F/M, Female Bilbo, Female Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Gandalf Meddles, Gen, I completely destroy canon and re-make it for my own devious purposes, Magic Bilbo Baggins, Mentions of suicide of minor character, Minor Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, Sorry Not Sorry, Thorin Is an Idiot, good dragons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-08 11:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8841973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SakeruTama/pseuds/SakeruTama
Summary: Whoever said that it's darkest before dawn has clearly never seen a sunrise before.
After years of suffering and destruction Bilba escapes to the Shire for peace and isolation. When a certain nosy Wizard appears Bilba suddenly has the chance to right past wrongs, but that's only if she can decide just how far should you go to save your family?





	1. Chapter 1

When she first awoke, it was to darkness.

It wasn’t a quiet or cold darkness, which she would years later come to experience many a time, but a darkness filled with warmth and the comforting hum of creation.

Her mother greeted her when she first awoke in the darkness and there they stayed for a long time. Content in the darkness and one another.

Until one day she felt the arrival of her brother, a crack of sound above the normal hum, and then his presence in the back of her mind. A second brother followed not long after, as did two sisters.

It was upon the arrival of her two final siblings some time later, one brother and one sister arriving at the same time as one another, that the darkness ended and light began.

* * *

 

‘Why are you doing this?’

The destruction and decay of war surrounded her but she cared not, too consumed by her own grief. She had watched these lands being born, loved them dearly as her mother had, but now could not find herself to care.

Scorching fires caressed her but no pain was felt or mark left on her body, for such flames could not kill a beast such as her.

‘Glaurung is dead, and Óleryd and Scatha are missing, please brothers stop this madness.’

She watched as they both ignored her and turned away, returning to the chaos and destruction below. She wouldn’t, and couldn’t right now, stop them. She fled the battle after that, carrying the comatose body of her remaining sister as far far away as she could.

* * *

 

‘Please stay, for me’

She froze. In all the years since they came come to Rivendell, fleeing the violence and destruction brought about by her brothers madness an age and a half ago, the one person she could never deny was her sister. How could she when Gilrin was all she had left?

She steeled herself against the wave of emotions she could feel rolling off her precious sister, seeping into her mind in an attempt to stop her from leaving. This was something she had prepared herself for after all, she just needed to remember why she was leaving in the first place.

She needed to find their missing sisters and mother.

She needed to stop their brothers at all costs.

This was her fault.

‘ You heard what the Maia said, if they aren’t stopped soon Melkor will have all of Middle-Earth until his disgusting thumb and I can’t allow it. I won’t. This is my task, my burden to bear as Eldest and I cannot allow anyone else to suffer for my previous failures.’

And with the sobs of her sister still ricocheting in her ears she left the Elven stronghold.

* * *

 

‘Ancalagon is dead and his stone has been shattered…I’m so sorry sister’

It was heartbreaking for her delivering the news of their brothers death, she had done it before and not surprisingly it wasn’t something that got easier the more practise you got.

‘ What of the others?’

‘ Scatha has returned to her stone, I’ve hidden it deep inside a mountain so deep no one shall ever find it.’

‘ And Óleryd?’

The silence seemed to answer Gilrin’s question and the younger of the two, both currently wearing the form of she-elves, dissolved to the floor with grief.

She left that night.

* * *

She spent many, many years travelling the length and breadth of Middle Earth from that point on. Helping where she could, destroying the evil left on the earth every time is crossed her path.

Actively seeking it out more often than not.

But no matter the good she did or the evil she removed, she could never remove the guilt and shame she felt for the deaths of her family and for all of the ones caused by them.

She returned to Rivendell only a handful of times over the years. For each time she left she felt her heart break hearing the distress and anguish of her sister. She knew she couldn’t stay there forever, yet she also knew her sister couldn’t leave.

Too fragile, too scared and too damaged to ever face the world outside again.

* * *

She had left Rivendell for a final time in the form of a human woman, travelling with the Dúnedain rangers of the North. They travelled together for a good number of weeks, heading west on reports of increased Orc sightings.

She had planned on travelling with them for a while longer, with the intention of visiting the mountains, when the Rangers began to tell her story of a place called ‘The Shire’. A place known for it’s peaceful inhabitants and prosperous lands.

Intrigued she decided to separate from the Rangers earlier than planned to explore what was one of the few places in all of Middle Earth she hadn’t visited.

* * *

 

‘I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure’

She’d lost track of how long she had been in the shire when the Wizard, Gandalf The Grey, came strolling into her life without so much as a by-your-leave. The children of Yavanna had been good to her throughout the years and in many respects she had taken advantage of that to escape. Escape from her self, her responsibilities and the memories of what she had, and had not, done throughout her many years on this land. For a long while it felt like she had managed to escape from the world itself.

‘An adventure? I don't imagine anyone west of Bree would have much interest in adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things that make you late for dinner.’

‘Not even you, Bilba Baggins? Well I must say, I expected one of the seven great dragons, even if they are disguised as a hobbit, to have a little more...well fire’

Clearly she hadn't escaped well enough.

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilba considers whether a mildly flame-grilled wizard would be less annoying than the one she currently has to deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the kudos and comments on the first chapter! I'm honoured.
> 
> There are bits with this chapter I'm not happy about but I was getting to the point where I felt like I could spend forever changing and editing it and never be 100% happy with it.
> 
> I have no beta so all errors and mistakes are my own.

Bilba Baggins had done enough trips around the sun to know when a day was going to be terrible. Maybe it was the ever watching Valar trying to take mercy on her soul, telling her to stay in bed that day or at the very least stay in side. Or maybe she had just developed an allergy to bad days and it was her sinuses flaring up.

Either way she knew the instant she saw Gandalf appear at her gate that today was a day she should have listened to whatever it was and stayed in bed.

Doors locked, windows bolted, the whole 9 yards.

She listened to him prattle on for a while, some ridiculous over-analysation of a simple ‘Good Morning’, although frankly why she even gave him the time of day was beyond her, and then something about an adventure. 

‘Not even you, Bilba Baggins? Well I must say, I expected one of the seven great dragons, even if they are disguised as a hobbit, to have a little more...well fire’

She wondered if the Manwë and Varda would be particularly upset if she returned their favourite Maia slightly crispy.

‘And I thought that wizards tended to be smarter and more cautious of who they bait. You’re fooling no-one right now Grey one’

Gandalf huffed and Bilba had to tame her desire to laugh.

‘So what's this business of adventure then? And what miserable bunch of misfits are you throwing me in with this time?’

‘Well my dear, why don’t we discuss this over tea?’

* * *

Gandalf left the hobbit hole about an hour later, narrowly avoiding a very expensive tea set being thrown at his head.

In fairness Bilba had reacted much the way he had expected, considering he had signed her up to join a company of dwarves, probably the race that hated her kind the most, to steal from and possibly kill Smaug The Terrible, probably the being she hated the most.

Her eyes had softened just a fraction when he had told her the tragic tale of Durin’s people during her brothers latest invasion. How the young Thorin Oakenshield was thrust in charge of his people too young and too soon, a notion she was acutely familiar with, and was now hoping to re-claim what once was there for honour and revenge.

Again, notions that she was acutely and painfully familiar with.

He knew as soon as he saw that, a small gap in her impossibly high defences, that he had a chance. A small chance but he has worked with less.

They had been half way through their conversation when Bilba asked the one question Gandalf had hoped she wouldn’t.

‘Do you they know who...or rather _what_ I am?’

‘ They know you are highly skilled and not to be judged on outward appearance, they know..’

‘If I wanted my questions to be so thoroughly ignored, I would go willingly talk to Lobelia. As you can see I’m still thankfully sound of mind so that won’t ever be happening, so answer the damn question Gandalf’

The wizard had sighed and slumped slightly in defeat at that point, he should have known better than try get anything past her.

‘I have told them that you are a dragon-child.’

For a brief second she had looked like she would spontaneously combust, her eyes flashing a bright golden amber for just a moment before fading back to their usual soft brown. After a short yet exceedingly tense moment she seemed to concede and nodded.

That had been by far the surprise of the day.

‘Makes sense I guess. That way I don’t have to hide all of who I am and the dwarves will dislike me enough not to get too close before the whole thing goes tits up as per usual’

Dragon Children has been the debatably controversial children born of one of the seven great dragons and another race. During the first age or so, when all of Bilba’s siblings had still be alive, there had been an abundance of dragon children roaming Middle Earth, as her brothers Glaurung and Ancalagon had always been particularly amorous, and Scatha had always had a policy of doing what ever and who ever she wanted.

Most of the children born could shift between their dragon forms and whatever race their other parent was from at will, whilst a few didn’t have a dragon form at all. When Bilba’s brothers had sided with Morgoth and his madness the mind link that existed between dragon parent and child, much like the one shared between Bilba, her mother and her siblings, also turned their children with a dragon form to darkness.

The children who lived away from their dragon fathers quickly turned against their own friends and families, killing them and whoever else was near by. Some were killed and some managed to return to their fathers and became an army under the cruel hand of Morgoth. It has been a horrific experience for Bilba having to fight against and kill her own nieces and nephews.

The children of the female dragons and their remaining few  cousins not affected scattered to the winds, in fear they would be killed or would eventually fall to darkness like their siblings and cousins. A small few had been allowed to stay, the belief that the best defence against a dragon was in fact another dragon was what stayed the hands of many from killing them but most were shunned by the very people they called family.

Around the second age, most of the remaining dragon children were able to blend back into their respective races and societies and from there the line of the dragons began to dilute into the gene pool. At that point Bilba decreed that there would be no further Dragon Children born from the remaining dragons. They simply couldn’t risk it.

Now in the Third Age the Dragon Children left were looked upon with varying degrees of suspicion and distrust, although most now were diluted descendants of the first generation, they still had to live with the consequences of so long ago.

After that Bilba and Gandalf discussed some of the finer points of the journey, what the dwarves should and shouldn’t know, the general route and some of the possible areas of concern for the journey.Gandalf was truly surprised she seemed to be taking it all so well, but thankful none the less.

It was as Gandalf got up to leave that Bilba asked how many dwarves would be part of the company and when she should expect them. At his answer of 13 and tonight the innocent tea set was launched at his head.

Gandalf wasn’t entirely sure if she missed on purpose or not but the roar that followed him out of the door maybe him think it was more his good fortune that saved him.

* * *

By some magic or miracle she didn't know but Bilba managed to get a suitable amount of food together over the course of the afternoon after Gandalf left but not without contentiously cursing the wizard’s name.

Honestly, it was bad enough she was going to have to parade around as a Dragon Child but to not even give her 24 hours notice of guests? She would have tried to beat some manners into him if she didn’t already know it was completely pointless and a waste of precious time.

It was only when she took a step back and examined her handy work that she realised maybe she had spent too long in Hobbit company after all as she heard the old oak table creaked softly under the weight of the dishes prepared.

Okay so maybe she’d gone a touch overboard and there was a _little_ too much food but honestly she was feeding thirteen dwarves for the first time and she was starting on the back foot in terms of a good first impression so she was going to take any chance she could to improve things.

In reality she supposed she was putting off packing, because packing meant leaving. Packing meant that it was finally time to come out of hiding. Meant leaving this safe little bolthole that she had found for herself. She had spent so many years in The Shire, floating between families and helping out where she could that the thought of leaving had her exceedingly uncomfortable. She’d found friends here, found family, found _peace._

It meant leaving behind the memories of Belladonna.

That fierce little hobbit that Bilba loved dearly with all her heart. Belladonna had captured Bilba’s heart the moment she came squawking into the world, a vine like mark around her ankle signalling her as one of Óleryd’s descendants. Bilba had assisted in the young Took’s birth and the moment she held her to pass her to her mother she knew then and there she would do whatever she could to protect this young faunt.

For a while Bilba had managed and Belladonna thrived as the happiest and wildest child The Shire had seen for a very long time. When Belladonna fell in love with and married shy and sensible Bungo Baggins, the only person prouder than Bilba was Belladonna’s mother. When Bungo and Belladonna found out they couldn’t have children Bilba was there in an instant to console the two in anyway she could.

They decided shortly after that Bilba would be adopted into the Baggins family and made Bungo’s heir. The only way they could make sure everything they had went to someone they loved. Bilba had scoffed and pointed out that they had years and years yet before they would reach old age and need to think of such things but Belladonna had insisted.

And then like all lights that burned too bright, Belladonna’s life was snuffed out too soon during the fell winter. Bungo followed not long after from sickness and a broken heart leaving Bilba so painfully alone.

Bilba was pulled abruptly from her thoughts by a thundering knock on her front door. She blinked for a moment, just how long had she been stood there lost in melancholy? Too long to be healthy thats for sure.

She headed towards the front door with mild trepidation and nervousness but froze just as she arrived at the door.

What in Eru’s name was she doing being afraid of a couple of dwarves? She ranked pretty close to the top of the list of scariest things in Middle Earth and she was nervous about greeting a group of dwarves? Now she knew she had spent too long with the Hobbits.

The rattle of the front door as whoever was outside knocked again brought her once again back to reality. She readied herself for what was going to be the start of a very very long night and opened to door.


End file.
